dare-mcp-server

Generate video and images from inside Claude, billed to your own Dare credits.

Ask Claude for a shot and it makes one — Seedance 2.5, Seedance 2.0, Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0 Pro, Hailuo 2.3 for video, Nano Banana 2, GPT Image 2 and Seedream 5 Pro for stills. No new subscription, no API key to buy: it spends the Dare credits you already have.

> make me a 10 second 720p cinematic shot of rain on a neon Tokyo street, 16:9

  Estimated 110 credits (you have 4,280). Generating…
  Done: https://storage.trydare.com/…/rain-tokyo.mp4

Works with Claude Code, the Claude desktop app, and Cowork.

Install

You need Node.js 20 or newer. Check with node --version; if that errors, install the LTS build from nodejs.org (on a Mac, brew install node also works).

Then run one command in your terminal:

npx dare-mcp-server setup

That is the whole install. The wizard:

1. shows you where to find your Dare token (four clicks in your browser),

2. checks it against Dare and prints your credit balance,

3. saves it to ~/.dare-mcp/config.json with owner-only permissions,

4. adds Dare to Claude Code and/or the Claude desktop app for you.

Restart Claude when it finishes. In Claude Code, /mcp should now list dare.

npx dare-mcp setup works too — dare-mcp is a short alias that forwards to the same package.

The server signs in as you, using the long-lived Clerk __client cookie from your browser. It mints a fresh 60-second session token for every call, exactly as the Dare web app does.

1. Sign in at https://trydare.com in Chrome, Edge, Arc or Brave.

2. Open DevTools — Cmd+Option+I on macOS, F12 on Windows and Linux.

3. Go to the Application tab → Storage → Cookies → https://clerk.trydare.com. (In Firefox and Safari the tab is called Storage instead.)

4. Find the row named __client and copy its Value — a long string starting eyJ. Copy the value, not the name.

5. Paste it into the wizard. Your terminal will not echo it back.

The cookie is valid for about a year, so this is a one-time step unless you sign out of Dare.

Treat it like a password. It grants full access to your Dare account and can spend your credits. The wizard keeps it in one file with 0600 permissions and deliberately does not write it into your Claude config, so your Claude settings stay safe to sync or share.

Claude Code

claude mcp add dare --scope user -- npx -y dare-mcp-server

Claude desktop app — edit the config file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dare": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "dare-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

Then quit and reopen the app.

Both of these read your token from ~/.dare-mcp/config.json. If you would rather pass it as an environment variable (CI, containers, a shared machine), set DARE_CLIENT_TOKEN instead — it takes precedence over the stored file. See Configuration.

git clone https://github.com/avi-aggarwal14/dare-mcp-server.git
cd dare-mcp-server
npm install          # builds automatically
npm run setup        # same wizard

Point Claude at node /absolute/path/to/dare-mcp-server/dist/cli.js instead of npx.

Check it works

npx dare-mcp-server check

Mints a token, reads your balance, lists a few library items. Run it any time the tools start failing — it is the fastest way to tell a stale cookie from a Dare outage.

First things to try

Once Claude has restarted, just ask in plain English:

> how many Dare credits do I have?
> what video models can I use, and what do they cost?
> make a 5 second clip of a paper boat going down a rain gutter, cinematic, 16:9
> use ~/shots/hero.png as a reference and animate the character walking toward camera
> what's in my Dare library from this week?

Claude will quote you a credit estimate before spending anything, and you can always ask it to do a dry run first.

Tools

CLI

Configuration

Credentials are read in this order, first hit wins:

1. DARE_CLIENT_TOKEN in the environment

2. ~/.dare-mcp/config.json (written by setup)

The stored file is plain JSON, so you can edit it directly:

{
  "clientToken": "eyJ...",
  "maxCreditsPerCall": 500,
  "uploadRoots": ["/Users/you/Movies", "/Users/you/Pictures"]
}

Everything else is environment variables:

DARE_MAX_CREDITS_PER_CALL is a client-side circuit breaker against a model talking itself into a 10-variation 30-second batch (3,200 credits). The default of 500 allows any single Seedance 2.5 clip while blocking runaway batches; raise it deliberately when you want a batch. The estimate is conservative in the one place it cannot be exact: a video reference whose length Dare cannot report is priced at 30 seconds, which is Dare's own assumption. The guard fails closed: if a reference clip's duration cannot be read, the generation is refused rather than submitted on a guessed estimate.

DARE_UPLOAD_ROOTS is an allowlist, not a convenience. Without it, dare_upload_media refuses local paths entirely — otherwise a prompt-injected model could ask the server to upload your shell environment or Claude config, both of which contain DARE_CLIENT_TOKEN. Point it at the folders that actually hold your source footage.

Credit costs

Dare prices every job as provider cost in dollars, times 1.5, converted at 750 credits per $49.99, rounded up to the nearest 1, 5 or 10 credits. The server reproduces that formula exactly; it was checked against real charges (a 4s 480p Seedance 2.5 clip billed 20 credits, as predicted). Typical figures:

Attaching a video reference applies a 0.6x multiplier on Seedance models, and on Seedance 2.5 the reference clip's own seconds are billed on top. Image and audio references do not change the price.

Always sanity-check with dare_estimate_cost before a batch.

Reference-driven generation

1. dare_upload_media  { file_path: "/Users/you/shots/hero.png" }
     -> storage_key: "uploads/abc123..."
2. dare_generate_video {
     prompt: "the character from the reference walks toward camera through fog",
     reference_storage_keys: ["uploads/abc123..."],
     duration_seconds: 8
   }

Seedance 2.5 takes up to 50 references (30 image, 10 video, 10 audio), each clip 2–30s, 30 combined seconds per kind. With a video reference attached it derives duration and aspect ratio automatically. Seedance 2.0 models take 12 (9/3/3), 15s combined, and need a visual reference alongside any audio one. Veo 3.1 takes up to 3 images and is then fixed at 8 seconds. Kling and Hailuo take no references at all.

Remote HTTP (optional)

A stateless streamable-HTTP entrypoint is included for hosting the server behind a URL:

DARE_CLIENT_TOKEN='eyJ...' \
DARE_MCP_BEARER_TOKEN="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  PORT=3000 npx dare-mcp-server http

POST /mcp, health check at /health. The server refuses to start without a bearer token of at least 24 characters, since these tools spend real money. DNS-rebinding protection is on by default and scoped to localhost; widen it with DARE_ALLOWED_HOSTS / DARE_ALLOWED_ORIGINS when deploying behind a domain. Local file uploads and URL uploads are both disabled on this transport regardless of configuration.

Troubleshooting

DARE_UNAUTHORIZED — the __client cookie is missing, stale, or you signed out of Dare in that browser. Run npx dare-mcp-server setup again with a fresh value.

DARE_UNKNOWN_PROCEDURE — Dare changed their internal RPC. The procedure names live in src/dare.ts; compare against a fresh capture from the web app's network tab.

DARE_INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS — the error reports credits required versus available.

DARE_COST_GUARD — your own DARE_MAX_CREDITS_PER_CALL limit fired. Working as intended.

DARE_REFERENCE_UNKNOWN — a reference storage key could not be resolved, so the cost could not be estimated. Check the key came from dare_upload_media or dare_list_uploads.

DARE_UPLOAD_FORBIDDEN — the file is outside DARE_UPLOAD_ROOTS, or you are on the HTTP transport where local reads are disabled.

Security notes

• The __client token is account-level access. Anything that can read it can spend your credits. setup therefore stores it in ~/.dare-mcp/config.json at 0600 rather than in your Claude config, which is often synced, backed up or committed.

• dare_generate_* calls are never retried automatically after an auth failure. Dare's create endpoint has no idempotency key, so a blind retry could bill you twice.

• Uploading from a URL resolves the host first, refuses loopback, private, link-local, CGNAT, multicast and IPv4-mapped/6to4/NAT64 forms of those, pins the connection to the vetted address so DNS rebinding cannot race the check, and re-checks every redirect hop.

How it works

Claude Code / desktop / Cowork
        │  MCP (stdio)
        ▼
  dare-mcp-server
        │  1. POST clerk.trydare.com/v1/client/sessions/{id}/tokens   (__client cookie)
        │     -> 60s session JWT, cached 45s
        │  2. POST api.trydare.com/rpc/{procedure}                    (Bearer JWT)
        │     oRPC envelope: { json, meta }
        ▼
    Dare backend

Uploads are three steps: storage.generateUploadUrl -> PUT to signed storage -> uploads.create.

Procedures used

spec carries only the keys the chosen model declares, exactly as Dare's composer builds it: Seedance models send { tool, prompt, model, audioEnabled, aspectRatio, duration, quality, context? }, Kling omits quality, Hailuo sends { tool, prompt, model } and nothing else, GPT Image 2 has no quality. duration is a string like "8s", context is { mediaStorageKeys, webLinkIds }, and every attached asset is also referenced in the prompt as @<storageKey>. Use dry_run: true on either generate tool to see the spec for any combination without submitting.

Errors are mapped so an agent can act on them: a missing record is DARE_NOT_FOUND, a renamed procedure DARE_UNKNOWN_PROCEDURE, a schema mismatch DARE_BAD_REQUEST with the field-level issues included.

Generation statuses seen in the wild: queued and processing while running, succeeded or failed at the end. The finished file is at generation.outputAsset.storageUrl. Anything unrecognised is treated as still-running, so a renamed in-progress state is never mistaken for a finished one.

Uninstall

claude mcp remove dare --scope user     # Claude Code
rm -rf ~/.dare-mcp                      # your stored token

For the desktop app, delete the "dare" entry from claude_desktop_config.json. Nothing else is installed — npx does not leave the package behind.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome, especially:

• Dare changed a procedure name or spec shape and something broke

• pricing drifted from the table above

• a model was added or removed from Dare's composer

git clone https://github.com/avi-aggarwal14/dare-mcp-server.git
cd dare-mcp-server
npm install
npm run build
npm run check        # needs a real token
npm run inspect      # MCP Inspector against a local build

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Please never paste a __client token into an issue, a log, or a test fixture — it is a live credential.

Licence

MIT. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Dare. "Dare", "Seedance", "Veo", "Kling" and "Hailuo" belong to their respective owners.